Christmas Day 1999
Shortly after they boarded the plane in La Paz — the plane that was supposed to take her son to safety — Elvi took off her black and white cardigan and laid it gently over Mael's pock-scarred arms. "Todo va a estar bien," she whispered. It's all going to be okay.
Elvira Penaloza had one change of clothes for herself, and one for her 7-year-old son, Hector Mael Ojeda, when she boarded that American Airlines flight. She had $20, a letter in English for the cab driver who would take them from Tampa International Airport to All Children's Hospital in St. Petersburg, and a makeshift blood transfusion kit.
She held her son as his nose bled on the way to Miami. Though American Airlines had donated the tickets, the airline had made sure to explain that it was not liable for anything that happened to Mael in the air. So Elvi had stashed a syringe and IV bag in the overhead compartment. She had never given a transfusion before, but if her son needed one — a kick-start that would pump his veins full of the platelets they were missing and stop the trickle from his nose — she was ready. Elvi would stick the syringe into her own arm, draw out her own blood, then inject it into the IV bag and into her son.
But Mael made it through, the syringe stayed empty. For a moment, the bleeding stopped.
In Miami on a layover, Elvi spent almost half of her $20 on pizza for herself and her son. When they landed in Tampa, she pulled out the letter. She didn't know what a cab was, didn't know a word of English. So she walked around the airport, showing the piece of paper to whoever would stop to read it. Finally, a woman understood, and brought mother and son outside to the curb, into America.
A nurse was waiting for Mael at All Children's at 8 p.m. on Christmas Day. She stuck a needle into an unblemished spot among the scars and bruises the boy had gotten from transfusions in Bolivia, sending clean blood, full of platelets, into his veins. Mael fell asleep when it was through, his mother's sweater covering him, an uneaten dinner next to his bed.
Elvi was starving, but she wouldn't touch her son's meal — that would get you kicked out of a Bolivian hospital. So she pulled out two bags of peanuts she'd kept from the flight, chewing them slowly as she looked at her son in his American hospital bed. Fourteen weeks before, she had rushed him from their mountain city in Bolivia, driven through the night to La Paz as he bled in the back of the family's red jeep. "Finally, my son is going to get better," she thought as she fell asleep in her bedside chair.
Elvi woke up every half hour that night. She had to check on her son and make sure that their Christmas miracle hadn't been a dream.
Today, as she awaits a judge's decision on her own fate, Elvi is hoping for another miracle.
October 10, 1999
Until the night Mael's nose started to bleed, there'd been no sign that he was sick.
The life of Felipe Ojeda and his wife Elvi had been on an upswing. Their house in Oruro, a city in the Bolivian highlands, was small — Mael and his brother Nestor slept in the same bed, their parents and little sister Susana on a mattress next to them, four other families in adjoining rooms. But the empanada business Elvi had started was taking off, and the family had recently been able to buy a jeep and a phone line. With four adults working 16-hour days, and the children selling the meat pies at schools and open-air markets, they were making almost $20 a day.
But on Oct. 10, Elvi couldn't stop Mael's nosebleed. It flowed until that afternoon, when she took him to a doctor in Oruro, who instantly told them to go to the hospital in La Paz. They took out the backseat of the jeep, slid a mattress onto the floor, then laid Mael and his IV on top. Felipe drove slowly over the mountain roads, the 150-mile trip took almost 11 hours. They had 500 pesos ($60).
Two days later, when the doctors diagnosed Mael with aplastic anemia, the money was already gone.
The disease is a failure of the bone marrow, which produces red and white blood cells that carry oxygen and fight infection, and platelets, which cause blood to clot near a wound. Short of a bone marrow transplant, which the doctors didn't know they should perform, all Elvi and Felipe could do was find new blood to pump through their child and try to get his cell counts up.
There were no blood banks in La Paz, so mother and father went to the public, asking strangers to help their son. They went to medical schools, army barracks and police academies, accepting medicine and blood donations and bringing them back to Mael in the hospital. They went on TV and radio to make appeals, but just months before another family had asked the public for donations to help a dying child, then let him die and kept the money. Nobody trusted the Ojedas.
Felipe and Elvi sold everything they owned. They were surviving on two pieces of candy a day, one for breakfast, the other for dinner. Then, with her child perishing, Elvi made one last plea. On a tip from Mael's doctor, she and Felipe went to the office of the Bolivian vice president's wife. Crying in the waiting room, Elvi never got the chance to speak to the vice president's wife. But she did tell her secretary the story, and a few days later he called the parents back to the office. He had met someone, a Bolivian woman who now lived in St. Petersburg, Florida. The secretary had told her Mael's story. The woman could help. She knew a Bolivian doctor at All Children's Hospital, a pediatric hematologist named Jerry Barbosa. She would make some calls.
On Dec. 14, three months after he'd arrived in La Paz, Mael was at his worst. The bruises and scars from the transfusions covered his arms. He was bleeding from his mouth, nose, penis and rectum. His doctor told Elvi that her son was going to die.
And then came the call.
Mael had been admitted to All Children's, free of charge. Dr. Barbosa would treat him for as long as he needed, also free. American Airlines had donated two tickets. When she heard the news, just hours after her son had been all but pronounced dead, Elvi couldn't breathe. Her head felt light, the oxygen cut off. Her eyes closed and she collapsed backwards into the arms of her oldest son, Nestor.
For the first time, this deeply religious Catholic family would be separated on Christmas. Mother and son were going to America.
January 24, 2000
Elvi and Mael had been living at the Ronald McDonald House in St. Petersburg for less than a month when the staff threw him a birthday party and gave him a cake, one of the first he'd ever had.
They just couldn't avoid opening their hearts to the boy. A small kid with cheeks that would swell when he was feeling healthy, Mael treated every room like a stage. He befriended anyone, greeting people with hugs instead of handshakes. When he'd get a transfusion, he'd come back to the house, shouting that he had "monkey blood" running through his veins as he swung from his favorite tree in the yard.
He was mischievous; He kept a water gun under the sheets of his hospital bed, ready to soak defenseless nurses. Even when he was sick, his deep chocolate eyes gleamed. And he was his mother's child, a true believer. He had a spot on his forehead just a few shades darker than his caramel skin, a birthmark unlike the freckles he shared with Elvi. He called it "God's fingerprint."
Mael started to learn English by watching Pokémon and Animal Planet on TV, while Elvi tried to repay the Ronald McDonald House for its free room by cleaning up and doing laundry. Like the more than 200 other such facilities around the world, the Ronald McDonald House adjacent to Bayfront Medical Center provides a place to stay for families whose children have been hospitalized. The house staff adopted Elvi and Mael, made them a part of their family.
But they knew Mael needed more. They knew he needed Felipe, Nestor and Susana.
He stopped eating, the pounds slipping off his already small frame. At night, alone in a full-size bed for the first time in his life, his head bald from chemotherapy, Mael would clutch his toy elephant and cry when the lights went out. In his sleep, he'd grab the stuffed animal's trunk like a telephone, hold it to his ear. "Papito, Papito?" he'd ask, pining for his daddy. "Nestor? Susana?"
During arts and crafts class at the hospital, Mael would pick the green construction paper, cut it into rectangles and write "$100" on each one. "Is this enough to get my family here?" he'd ask Dr. Barbosa, holding up his makeshift bills. "My sister's small, she could fit in a suitcase."
"Don't worry, Mael," Dr. Barbosa would say, handling the paper like gold. "This is more than enough."
On Aug. 11, 2000, Lupi Coffin, a translator at All Children's who Mael had begun calling Aunt Lupi, told Elvi that there was a family waiting for them in the Ronald McDonald House living room. They might be able to help get the rest of the family to America, she said.
As they got dressed in their second-floor room, Mael buttoning up a freshly ironed white shirt, he looked up at his mother. "Do you think I'll impress these people enough to bring our family here?" he asked. They went downstairs and turned the corner into the living room.
Nestor almost fell over, his little brother jumped on him so hard. The house's staff circled the reunited family, crying along with them. Elvi could barely breathe as she squeezed her husband and her daughter Susana. Felipe stared at his son — Mael didn't look like a sick kid anymore, the scars and bruises were gone. A few weeks earlier, McDonald House director Donna Young had contacted Children's Wish Foundation International, Inc., and told them about Mael. "Mael's wish [is] to have his brother and sister visit," she wrote to Children's Wish. "And [we] feel that it would benefit him both mentally and physically."
The visit was only supposed to last a month, but Young didn't want Nestor and Susana just sitting around the house, so she enrolled them in school. Soon, both of them were speaking English, and Mael was putting on weight. Nobody saw a reason for the family to go back to Oruro.
They lived at Ronald McDonald house, all five of them in one room, just as they had in Bolivia. Young and Coffin arranged for the family to get eyeglasses. The Ojedas celebrated Christmas together again that year — the kids were showered with presents from house and All Children's staffers. And Mael had his ninth birthday at McDonald's — it was his second cake in as many years. Felipe got a temporary green card and worked in the hospital's kitchen, even earning medical benefits that helped with Mael's care. Both he and Elvi helped around the house too, cleaning and landscaping, whatever they could do to repay Young and her staff.
After The St. Petersburg Times ran a profile on the family and the community's support, a man offered them an apartment behind his office, just a few blocks away from the hospital. The Ojedas moved out of the Ronald McDonald House on April 1, 2001. They had two plates, two cups, a teaspoon and a sugar bowl Mael had won playing Bingo. Chris Eaton, the man who gave them the apartment at a reduced rent, installed a new stove and refrigerator. Ronald McDonald House donated silverware and mattresses. The family settled into their version of the American life.
Mael wanted to go to school, wanted to become a pediatric hematologist — "Dr. B," he told Dr. Barbosa, "one day I'll come and work with you" — but he couldn't make it to class often enough. He was in and out of the hospital — a month at home, a month away. But every night that Mael was bedridden, Elvi slept by his side.
Mother and son would talk about Bolivia, about their faith, about Pokémon. Sometimes, they would compare beauty marks. They each had one on their chin, one on their lip and one on their palm. "Mom," he would say when they finished, "I'll never be far from you."
Mael was starting to get better, his bone marrow was actually producing its own platelets, when doctors found a donor for a transplant. But just weeks before the operation, tests revealed that his counts were going down again. And Dr. Barbosa discovered something else.
Mael had contracted hepatitis B, most likely from the ad hoc blood transfusions in Bolivia. A transplant would be too risky; Mael would have to undergo more chemotherapy.
His family, however, was beginning to thrive. Susana, 9, had become fluent in English, as had Nestor, 15, who had started his freshman year at Lakewood High School. Felipe, the time limit having run out on his temporary green card, had found a job in construction. In early May 2002, Felipe and Elvi put a down payment on a small house in north St. Petersburg.
A week later, Elvi was in Mael's hospital room. He was watching an African wildlife show on Animal Planet. A family of wildebeests had to cross a croc-filled river; they waited on the banks, figuring out what to do. Finally, one broke from the pack and waded in. One crocodile jumped the wildebeest. Then two more crocs came, then all of them.
"This is nasty," Elvi said to her son. "Why would crocodiles do this?"
The other wildebeests started crossing the river unabated as Mael looked up at his mother.
"Mommy," he said, "this is normal. Usually one of the family has to die so the rest can survive. The leader has to die for the good of the family."
Three days later, on May 21, 2002, Hector Mael Ojeda died wrapped in his mother's sweater.
January 6, 2005
Elvi received the letter in December 2004. She was to appear in January at the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration office in Tampa. They'd found her.
Elvi had come into the country five years earlier on a six-month tourist visa. When the visa expired, she received deferred action because of Mael's treatment. Nothing would be done on her immigration status until his care ended. But when Mael died, Elvi became illegal — and subject to deportation.
The fact that Elvi and the rest of her family had arrived in the U.S. at different times meant that her case would always be considered separately from theirs. When Felipe received a temporary green card in 2001, Nestor and Susana were automatically covered; Elvi was not. If he is granted a permanent green card before Elvi is deported, she will then be seen as the wife of a legal alien, and will be allowed to stay.
But Felipe applied for permanent status in August 2002. According to Jennifer Roeper, an immigration attorney handling Elvi's case pro bono for the Tampa firm of Fowler, White, Boggs & Banker, the U.S. government is still processing applications from 2001. "He filed this thing three years ago," Roeper says of Felipe. "You'd think three years would be enough. But it's just not. This is the post-9/11 era."
Elvira Penaloza could not be further from a terrorist, but that's how she felt walking into the immigration office, with Roeper and Donna Young, the McDonald House director, at her side. Her children went to school that day not knowing what would happen to their mom. Roeper didn't know either.
It was freezing in the office, a large room with a grey cement floor. Cameras were mounted on the ceiling, and holding cells were visible at the back. Elvi shook uncontrollably as she was photographed, fingerprinted. She thought she was going back to Bolivia.
The deportation officer could have locked her up. But he seemed to take to her. He told her to appear at the immigration court in Bradenton on March 24th. He wished her luck, and let her go.
On the day of Elvi's hearing, Roeper was now sure her client would be asked to leave the country, a "voluntary exit" that would not leave a mark on her record, but would still keep Elvi out of the U.S. for a decade. Elvi's concept of court came from TV — when she walked in, she expected the gavel to be slammed immediately.
But despite the protests of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement attorneys who wanted the case decided that day, the judge granted Roeper's request for a postponement. Elvi would have to come back Sept. 27, 2005. Maybe by then Felipe's green card would come through.
It didn't.
In September, Elvi again went before the judge. And again, Roeper was sure that her client would be deported. The two stood by Roeper's black Nissan Maxima, talking about the case, when a white feather drifted down from the sky. It passed by Roeper, almost touching her, then by Elvi, and landed on the ground. "It is a sign," Elvi thought. "A sign from Mael. He's talked to God, and something good will happen to us."
She looked at Roeper, confident that she would be OK. "Miracles can occur, even at the last minute," Elvi said. She was right, at least for now.
The judge acquiesced once more and set another date — Jan. 12, 2006.
"Many things can happen in 100 days," Elvi told Roeper afterwards. (As of press time, Felipe has not been approved for a green card, and Elvi is set to return to court for a third time on Jan. 12. It is unlikely that the judge will postpone her case again.)
If Elvi has to go back to Bolivia, the family has decided that she will go alone. Nestor, who's now in his freshman year of college after averaging a 3.5 in high school (he plans to be a pediatric hematologist), Susana, a sixth-grader at John Hopkins Middle School, and Felipe, still waiting for his green card, will stay in St. Pete.
"If I have to go back," Elvi says, sitting in the family's living room, "I will go back. But I won't take my kids back to poverty."
Their home is modest, but for the first time, Nestor and Susana have their own rooms. Elvi still makes empanadas, but she doesn't have a deep-fryer anymore, so she bakes them in the oven. (Nestor says the pies aren't as good as they were in Bolivia.) They have a few paintings on the wall, typical Floridian beach scenes. There's a large TV in the living room, next to it a bookcase that holds 12 volumes of Webster's Family Encyclopedia, Catechism of the Catholic Church, and a photography book, A Day in The Life of America. Snapshots cover every surface; most are of Mael.
The family sits on the pink thrift-store furniture, Susana's feet shuffling on the linoleum floor. They talk with a reporter about Elvi's impending court date, Mael, and their passion to become legal American citizens. Nestor translates for his parents.
"This year has gone really fast, because we've spent it counting the days," says Felipe. He's a soft-spoken man with serious eyes. He's just gotten back from work on a Friday afternoon, his pants stained with paint. "We might be here illegally, but it is its own punishment, because we're always on our toes. All we ask for is a little pity. We want people to know that we're not here to make a fortune. We just want our kids to have a better future. I'd give a kidney away for the [immigration] papers. Gladly."
"I'm willing to suffer the hardship if my children can stay here and finish what Mael started," says Elvi, who still volunteers at Ronald McDonald House. She's wearing the black and white cardigan, tears trickling down her face. "If I have to leave, I'll be thankful to the U.S. The U.S. let me enjoy the company of my son for two more years. I got to know him better. And I got the chance to love him so much more."
Elvi believes firmly that Mael has spoken with God, that he made a deal — his life for their citizenship. "The price he paid for us should not go to waste," she says.
Christmas Day, 2005
The Ojeda family doesn't have anything extravagant planned for this Christmas, which may be their last together for a decade. Like last year, they'll go out for ice cream. But because they spend every day waiting — waiting for Felipe's green card to come through, waiting for a deportation officer to show up at their door — not even Christmas is comfortable.
Since that plane flight six years ago, Elvi says, "Every Christmas is a promise for something better. When we get green cards in our hands, that promise will be filled. Maybe after that, we'll be able to celebrate Christmas more joyfully. Because Mael's dream will have come true."
This article appears in Dec 21-27, 2005.